Transforming asphalt-covered lots into verdant fields is one of the many surprising reasons for the growing role of landscape design and architecture in today's urban development.

You hit the accelerator when you see them. Nobody wants to linger beside failed strip shopping centers, shuttered office parks, abandoned factories and other lifeless casualties of urban decline and suburban sprawl. Look closer, however, and you may see development teams probing them for hidden opportunities, with landscape professionals playing key roles.

What are landscape architects and their colleagues doing in these wastelands? A lot more than we might suspect. America is rethinking the way it uses land, and turning to landscape professionals for help.

"The public thinks landscape architecture is about cutting grass and planting plants," admits Rob Ryan, ASLA, a principal of Hughes Good O'Leary & Ryan, an Atlanta-based landscape architecture firm. "Actually, we're more involved in land planning and community planning than gardening or horticulture. One of the consequences of urban sprawl is that people are changing the way they view development. As a result, we're seeing the emergence of landscaped public spaces in town centers, mixed-use projects that combine commercial and residential activities, and new, denser communities that favor pedestrians over automobiles."

Indeed, the 21st Century could well presage a golden era for landscape professionals engaged in the analysis, planning, design, construction, gardening, management, preservation and rehabilitation of land. Americans now want to nurture a continent that no longer seems as inexhaustible as it did four centuries ago. Manufacturers, for example, try to minimize the environmental impact of new factories. As Thomas A. Donnelly, president and COO of Valley Crest, a major landscape contractor that recently helped Mercedes-Benz build a new assembly plant in Tuscaloosa, AL, observes, it's time and money well spent. "Mercedes-Benz stressed its stewardship of the land in developing its site," he says. "Like other businesses, it found that it didn't cost much more to do the landscaping well."

Landscaping, the natural stage set?

Of course, many commercial projects do involve extensive plantings. Intense competition and rising public expectation are prompting developers to enhance the experience of shopping centers, hotels, housing and other income-generating properties with gardens, fountains and other landscape amenities. There is growing evidence that landscaping attracts customers who stay longer-and spend more.

"Studies show that landscaping sets the character and value of a place," notes Donald C. Brinkerhoff, FASLA, founder, chairman and CEO of Lifescapes International, Inc., a Newport Beach-CA landscape architecture firm. Brinkerhoff should know, having served such popular Las Vegas casino hotels as Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island. "Our firm adds value to housing, hotels, resorts and similar properties," he adds, "by actively contributing to the pleasure of the customer. We practice thematic stagecraft, creating set design you can walk around in."

The new Grove at Farmers Market, Los Angeles, designed by Elkus Manfredi for developer Rick Caruso, illustrates his point. This retail adjunct to a legendary produce market, which Lifescapes International served as landscape architect, introduces Los Angelenos and tourists to a richly landscaped old downtown. Complete with street car and town square, it's a big hit.

The cost of paving everything in sight

For all the glamour of casinos and destination shopping centers, the landscape industry is also heavily concerned with land management, a subject more Americans can appreciate, thanks to drought and flooding in recent years. It is now clear that intensive development of some types of properties harms society as well as owners. Landscape professionals, working with such specialists as irrigation consultants, are investigating how development can improve water use and sharply reduce runoff.

"Water use is a big issue in land planning today," reports Dave Pagano, ASIC, an irrigation designer and principal of D.D. Pagano Inc., Orange, CA. "Legislation requires new California projects to meet strict water regulations for optimizing water use. The law doesn't require you to shut off the water, but you must find effective ways to maintain your landscape."

Urban sprawl makes point source runoff a serious problem, Pagano indicates, as agricultural and forested lands are paved over for buildings, roads and parking lots. "Government agencies and developers are becoming very aware of the problem," he points out. "Efficient irrigation design and proper land management have become an inescapable cost of doing business."

Overall, the "greening" of America through landscape planning and design could be as lasting and profound as other environmental initiatives. Landscape is a fact of life. Green or not, it's more than a backdrop for the human comedy.

Why a wire-formed wall system was the right choice for a lush landscape in metropolitan Atlanta's Forsyth County:

Metropolitan Atlanta's Forsyth County has drawn so many affluent homeowners to its lush, rolling meadows that the population burgeoned 123% in the last decade to nearly 100,000. With businesses now arriving, Santee Properties developed the Gates at Laurel Springs to offer attractively landscaped office condominiums at competitive prices. So when civil engineer NRS Engineering sought an economical way to erect a 3,000-sq-ft retaining wall on the back edge of the property, it turned to Tensar Earth Technologies, Inc. (TET) for SierraScape, a wire-formed wall system with a positive mechanical connection that assures long-term connection integrity. Not only did TET provide full construction drawings, it brought a qualified installer, Contour, Inc., to do the installation. Notes Sean Wokasien, P.E., TET's Southeast regional manager, "SierraScape came in at a cost savings of 50% over a cantilevered concrete wall and 20-30% over a concrete block wall, with a comparable service life that will require no maintenance."

What could the following objects have in common other than an uncommon impact on the landscape?

- A magnificent, 54,000-lb. serpent head thrills children and adults at Carousel Park in Santa Monica, CA, with its flashing eyes and a fine spray of water through its nostrils.

- The excitement begins before families enter Tennessee's Memphis Zoo as they pass through receiving lines of lions, rhinoceroses, elephants and other wild creatures.

- Combining elegance with security after September 11, 2001, 300 monumental flower pots have been installed on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

All three vignettes describe products of Dura Art Stone, a producer of quality architectural ornaments, landscape furnishings and precast architectural wall panels since 1935. The company's products, which range from an ornamental bestiary to precast curtain wall panels, are shipped worldwide from factories in California and Georgia. They can be specified in precast concrete, cast stone, GFRC (glass fiber reinforced concrete), Glascrete™ (simulated cast stone combining polyester resin, fine aggregates and glass fibers at 1/5 the weight of cast stone), and composite (a high quality composite corrosive resistance laminate).

While architects and designers typically find what they need among Dura Art Stone's standard styles, the company can produce virtually any custom or critical design solution. In perimeter security and force protection; for example, it is knowledgeable about a wide range of private and public sector requirements. Its new Dura Art Wall™ offers an attractive alternative to standard precast concrete barriers that incorporates such precast concrete elements as planters, bollards and pilasters.

A new fountain gains instant entree to a beloved historic garden, thanks to the use of color-conditioned concrete.

New is not always better than old. Indeed, the charming new Mermaid's Fountain at the heart of the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Playground in London's Kensington Gardens demonstrates that new can be better if perceived as old. The latest addition to the Peter Pan-themed playground, a £1.25-million project replacing an earlier playground funded in 1906 by author J.M. Barrie (whose gift of a beloved Peter Pan statue in 1912 still stands), is so carefully integrated with the 18th-century landscape, part of the English Heritage Register of Historic Parks and Gardens, that it seems timeless.

Since there was no question that the playground would blend harmoniously with Kensington Gardens, the designers specified concrete admixtures from L. M. Scofield Company to help realize their vision. Scofield's CHROMIX® admixtures allowed workmen to mold the fountain like clay, imprint such shapes as starfish and leaves, and sandblast the surface to expose aggregates seeded into the concrete. As a result, the surface seems carved from rock-and patinated by years of exposure. The finely detailed modeling continues a European tradition for handling concrete as "liquid rock" to be routinely sculpted, imprinted and textured.

Enabling architects and landscape professionals to exploit the inherent versatility of concrete as a creative medium for hard landscape is also a tradition at L. M. Scofield, which has provided engineered systems for coloring, texturing, and improving performance in architectural concrete since 1915. The objective of these products is simple yet powerful. Scofield systems transform ordinary concrete into extraordinary, beautiful and durable building materials.